Most scientists have adopted minimalistic design principles for graphs. We still sometimes see 3D bar charts, but it’s rare. Data tables are another story. Sometimes journals take the formatting of data tables out of the hands of the authors. Perhaps they recognize that it’s an…
Dear Vendors with Product Search Interfaces,
This list of measurements is complete nonsense. It’s sorted alphabetically, not even numerically (numbers are treated as letters). That’s why “24 inches” comes before “3 inches”, with “27.0 millimeters” in between. It’s not hard to fix. Convert all…
André Maia Chagas recently pointed us towards his blog, Open Neuroscience. It turned us on to Sparkfun’s educational section. It’s very extensive and well curated.
By the way, Sparkfun also has education discount that…
Please enjoy this story from Mistress of the Animals about how her old mentor would keep all of his reviews– in the days of typewriters– and then compare new reviews to his…
Someone recently asked me, “What’s a good way I can share my code?”
There are several ways you can go, of course. Here are the first two that popped into my mind.
A full web site
Squarespace isn’t a…
3D printing is a great tool. However, I still don’t recommend buying your own 3D printer. Use a service instead (e.g., Ponoko, Shapeways, or Quickparts). Here’s why:
1. The technology moves fast.
What…
You just pay the impact factor right now for a subscription to Nature.
Converting them all into USD for comparison:
US: $38 (19% of the usual price)
Europe: $51 (18% of the usual price)
UK and rest…
This isn’t an advertisement. I wasn’t asked to post this. I just want to let you all know in case it’s useful. Newport is having a sale on optics and many of the discounts are…
In a previous post, we discussed how peak power is computed. Although Ti:Sapph laser manufacturers typically quote the average power, peak power is the more relevant quantity for two photon excitation. Here’s a graph showing…
Neverwet is now available for about $20.
This is a spray-on, 2-part superhydrophobic coating (translucent when dry). What would it be useful for in a lab? For starters, spraying it on anything that needs to be cleaned regularly might make it easier to clean. Also, it can…
I saw Benjamin Judkewitz trim the fat end off of a pipette tip and stick it onto a 1 mL syringe to make a fine tip for the syringe (above). This is handy for precisely…
